


could have fooled me

by adventureboots



Category: Great Pretender (Anime)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Edamura Makoto Deserves Better, Gen, Post-Case 4: Wizard of Far East, Trust Issues, addressing the fact that team confidence faked their deaths, and left edamura to form an emotional attachment with child traffickers for two months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28675845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventureboots/pseuds/adventureboots
Summary: There is a script for this, Makoto knows. This is when Makoto refuses and banters with Laurent, so that Laurent can feel both justified and superior when he finally, inevitably gets his way, but Makoto is too tired today. He's ready for the scene to end.(or: Makoto, after the Tokyo Job)
Relationships: Edamura Makoto & Abigail Jones, Edamura Makoto & Cynthia Moore, Edamura Makoto & Laurent Thierry
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	could have fooled me

They hold the afterparty in Cynthia’s yacht as they sail away from the island, when they're sure they're in the clear. They’re due to drop half of the crew at a nearby marina tomorrow morning, then continue on to Cynthia’s private island for what Team Confidence calls Recovery Week. In the meantime, the yacht is stocked with champagne and the crew’s favorite snacks and everyone is in high spirits from a complicated job well done.

The energy should be contagious. It's supposed to be the release after weeks of stress and deception. Cynthia had explained to Makoto once that the psychology behind the afterparty had less to do with celebration than recovery.

“When we do long games,” Cynthia said, “sometimes we bury pieces of ourselves or hide them behind armor in order to survive the game. The longer the con, the more likely we are to risk trauma, emotional bleed, or other long-term complications. Returning to the same place—the island—at the end of a game provides a consistent, safe place where members of the crew can… change out from their roles. Like a dressing room.”

“A dressing room?” Makoto asked. 

“Yes, you know. Removing makeup and wigs and decompressing from a role.” She had paused then. “It’s especially important for when a job turns violent or takes an unexpected turn.”

Makoto had hummed, recalling the Los Angeles Job, when nearly everyone had died in a shootout, and had not thought to ask any other questions. Had Cynthia known the details of Laurent’s plan even then? Had that been a lesson for the Tokyo Job? He didn’t think so, but how could he be sure? He was usually the last to know.

Makoto sleeps through the day, still on Japan time, and wakes to find the yacht docked in the small marina on Cynthia’s island and the crew gone. He disembarks empty-handed, having packed no suitcase, and finds the afterparty had migrated to the island house and apparently burned out at some point during the day. The kitchen’s a mess—empty glasses and potato chip bags scattered throughout—and a few crew members, dozing on the porch, wave to Makoto as he passes.

Cynthia is waiting for him in the kitchen, reading a book and drinking what looks like water from a wine glass, a blanket in her lap. She smiles when he enters and beckons him over to tousle his hair. It’s still stiff from the gel he used to slick back his hair the last few months and crunches weirdly at her touch.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she says, handing Makoto a glass of pear-gold champagne and clinks her own glass against it.

He takes a sip. Laurent would rattle off its unique flavor profile—kumquat and spice—but to Makoto it just tastes fizzy. “When will everyone else be heading out?”

“Abbie and Laurent are staying the whole week as well. Oz is still deciding, and Shi-won and Kudo are planning to head out in two days.” Cynthia considers him a moment and Makoto knows she sees more than he likes. “Your room is all set up if you want to go lie down,” Cynthia says. “I imagine the rest of the crew won’t be up for a while.”

“Thanks,” Makoto says. The jet lag, at least, is something they’re all experiencing. He salutes Cynthia with the champagne and goes to find his room.

The last time he was here, Makoto had shared a room with three other crew members. This time, he has his own room, a Western-style room with a clean, impersonal style, but closer examination reveals the shampoo is the same cheap kind he buys from conbini in Japan and the mini-fridge is filled with pineapple candy and Ramune and, hilariously (he still hasn’t figured out who to blame for this), edamame. There’s even a selection of coffee beans and the fancy fruit gummies from Paris that Makoto mentioned liking once. A bookshelf in the corner displays a tasteful selection of books, including the niche manga he likes and both Japanese-English and Japanese-Chinese dictionaries. A potted jade plant on the desk adds a touch of life to the room; the tissue box beside it has little cartoon cats marching across the cardboard.

The tailored selection is a little sweet and a little creepy. Makoto decides not to overthink it and fishes out a pair of new joggers and an old tee-shirt he’s 85 percent sure Laurent stole from him in Singapore. Although the sun is bright white and chipper, it's past midnight in Japan, so Makoto just crawls into bed, too thoroughly exhausted for anything else.

He doesn't dream. He sleeps another eleven hours and wakes in the early morning. He grabs a cardigan and wanders out of his room. When people are awake, they tend to congregate in the spacious living room-kitchen, but this morning everyone else is elsewhere. Still muzzy, Makoto putters around the kitchen until he finds a French press and goes through the ritual of making coffee.

He pours an extra cup for the chairwoman by habit, which leaves him utterly thrown when he realizes. The coffee is a nice and he doesn't want to pour down the drain, so he abandons it and the carafe on the counter for the next person and goes to nurse his cup in the porch chair. It’s cool out, a brisk wind coming in, and the grey sea and the night sky blur together, uncertain in the darkness where to draw the line of the horizon.

By the time Abbie finds him, Makoto is chilled to the bone.

She hovers in the doorway. “Hey.”

Makoto smiles at her. Part of him still believes she and Cynthia are dead, so it’s hard to look away, but he does, turning back to the sunrise. “Hey.”

For a moment, he can feel the weight of her consideration on him. He’s come to understand that Abbie appreciates quiet moments of companionship over questions or chatter, so he lets her decide what she wants to do. Eventually she drifts into the chair next to him and pulls out her smartphone. He listens to Abbie tap away at a game and the sounds of the house slowly waking up and wonders if the chairwoman will be alright on her island.

When he feels ready, he says, “Sorry I got you fake-killed.”

Abbie finishes her level before she responds. She handily slaughters a tiny neon monster on screen and then closes the app and says, “Sorry I fake-died.”

If it were anyone else, it would sound insincere, but it’s Abbie, and Abbie doesn’t say anything she doesn’t mean. Makoto nods and Abbie nods and they move on with their lives, because they both still have them, somehow. Amazing. They sit there on the porch until the sun rises and Makoto’s coffee is cold and Shi-won sticks her head out to say that breakfast is nearly ready.

Back in the kitchen, the other coffee cup and carafe has gone, which means someone either drank it or dumped it. In its place, a shirtless Laurent is cooking eggs three different ways while Ozaki slices bread and fruit for the table. Cynthia, still in a nightgown, lords over both of them, giving instructions and criticism as she deems necessary.

Makoto sets the table and makes a fresh pot of coffee and brews water for tea. Abbie, who hates both tea and coffee, gets hot chocolate. Communal meals aren’t uncommon at the beach house, and a calming combination of bustle and quiet fills the kitchen until everyone is seated at the table. Kudo slips into the kitchen at the very last moment—Makoto thinks he was avoiding work—and they eat together. Laurent and Shi-won carry the conversation, with input from the crew, and Ozaki wisely sits several seats away from Makoto.

“You’re quiet this morning,” Cynthia says to him. “Are you feeling alright?”

Makoto taps his fork against his plate. “Mhm.”

She lets it slide but gives him a Look that means she’ll be knocking on his door later. Makoto can’t really bring himself to care.

Recovery Week on the island usually involves Laurent-enforced team-building exercises, optional for everyone except Makoto, and what Laurent calls “confidence drills,” which means Laurent gives Makoto a stupid assignment like Get Abbie to Drink Coffee or Convince Shi-won to Make Haemul Pajeon. This time, there are no drills. This time, Laurent is avoiding Makoto, somehow, without actually avoiding him—he’s there when there’s a crowd, but gone if there are less than three people in the room, and he talks to Makoto, but only about game theory and Iranian fashion designers and the Russian ballet, which is the Laurent version of talking about the weather. Makoto lets it happen, and in turn decides to hide from his father forever, a chore which mostly involves reading, napping, and watching anime alone in his room.

Avoiding his dad becomes a kind of game. Abbie and Cynthia are, for some reason, the vanguard of this effort once they catch onto what he’s doing, distracting his dad if Makoto needs time to escape (Cynthia’s preferred method) or shoving him into closets and the pool to hide him (Abbie’s preferred method). Makoto’s pretty sure Ozaki knows what they’re doing and is simply allowing it to run its course, which makes Makoto feel like a petty child acting out, but he would rather drink gasoline than have a meaningful conversation with Ozaki, which is why Laurent finds him in the laundry room on the third day of Recovery Week, smoking a cigarette while his dad eats the world’s slowest breakfast in the kitchen.

Laurent blinks at him crouched beside a pile of dirty laundry. Makoto blinks back, frankly surprised Laurent knows where the laundry room is, let alone how to do his own laundry. Makoto isn’t sure he’s seen him wear the same outfit twice if it wasn’t for a con, and had gotten it into his head that Laurent simply bought, bartered, and/or stole new Armani suits and Hawaiian shirts when his old clothes were dirty.

For a moment, Makoto wonders if he’s actually caught Laurent off guard, but then he notices Laurent isn’t even holding laundry. Of course. Conversations with Laurent happen when Laurent decides they happen, and if they don’t always follow his script exactly, they at least follow his cues, and Makoto is learning he has little say in the matter. Laurent smiles fetchingly at him and says, “You should quit.”

Makoto freezes and hopes the utterly gutted feeling doesn't show on his face. He almost doesn’t register Laurent slapping him on the arm.

There's a nicotine patch on his arm. Makoto breathes out a cloud of smoke and pulls together a scowl. It's an expression he knows is intimidating because he used it on Ishigami with success, but it just makes Laurent smile at him like he’s an adorable, poorly trained dog.

“Very scary,” Laurent says approvingly. He sidles closer to Makoto so that Makoto is penned between him, the dryer, and Kudo’s stinky boxers. “Hand over the cigarettes and I’ll give you something better in return.”

There is a script for this, Makoto knows. This is when Makoto refuses and banters with Laurent, so that Laurent can feel both justified and superior when he finally, inevitably gets his way, but Makoto is too tired today. He's ready for the scene to end. Wordlessly, he offers the butt of his cigarette to Laurent, who takes it gingerly and snubs it on the washing machine, and digs the rest of his cigarettes out of his pocket, which Laurent replaces with a pack of gum.

“Is this for a job?” Makoto asks. He can’t imagine another reason Laurent would care. 

“No, Edamame, it’s for you. This as well.” Laurent hands him a slip of paper—a business card with a Japanese name and number on it.

“What’s this?”

Laurent rolls a shoulder, inscrutable as ever. “I know a guy in Okinawa who works in the coffee business. He’s looking for help expanding his business in Japan. I thought you would be a good fit for the job.”

“Oh?” Makoto unwraps a piece of gum and pops it in his mouth. Cinnamon. “Is this so I can convincingly sell a coffee plantation to greedy businessmen next year? Or, no—do you want me to work as a cutting edge scientist marketing new caffeine pills to an unethical pharmaceutical company?”

Laurent doesn’t even bat an eye at the accusation, and Makoto feels a little splinter of anger dig itself into his heart. He wants Laurent to be as affected by Makoto’s words and actions as Makoto is by his. He wants him to be angry, to be hurt. He wants to wipe that smug smile off his face.

“Edamame,” Laurent says carefully. He’s staring at Makoto intently. “I’m not setting you up for a job. The last few months have been harder on you than anyone else in the crew, and I think you need time to recover and do things that you enjoy. You enjoy coffee.”

Makoto looks at the phone number on the card and imagines it: spending a few months learning about coffee farming and horticulture, becoming a passable expert on the field, maybe working as a barista at some fancy coffeeshop. He’d have an opportunity to work with people and adjust to the steady monotony of honest work. He would be good at it. He would enjoy it. Already, he knows he’ll agree to the job and that it will feel like a defeat.

“I don’t believe you,” Makoto says, surprising himself, although as soon as he says it, he knows that it’s true. “I don’t believe you care.”

Frowning, Laurent reaches for Makoto’s shoulder. Makoto tilts out of the way, and Laurent hesitates. “Edamame—”

“I’m having trouble knowing what to believe,” Makoto says tightly. “You and Abbie die in an FBI shootout—but you don’t. I get a job as a mechanic based on my own merit, but not really. I get a job in trading, but surprise! It’s actually child trafficking. I’m the same as my dad, but no, unlike me, he’s actually just a talented con man who just never trusted my mother and me enough to tell us what he did for a living.” Makoto curls into himself and his hands find their way into his hair, shielding his face from Laurent’s view. “I thought I killed my own dad, Laurent. I thought Abbie and Cynthia were dead. I thought you—I thought you—”

Makoto’s voice is rising now, but he doesn’t care. Probably everyone in the kitchen can hear them anyway. “And regardless of what I thought, I sold children. I performed a role that I knew was deplorable for two months. Why? What was the lesson this time, Laurent? Punishment for not reaching out to my dad? You thought he was a child trafficker so ha! Joke's on you, now you’re a child trafficker too?”

“Makoto.” Laurent places a hand on Makoto’s like he had in the Suzaku Group set, like he’s trying to convince Makoto to put down a wakizashi. Makoto stills. “You’re right. You shouldn’t trust me.”

Of all the things he expected to hear, that was not on the list. Makoto pulls his hand away from Laurent. In the corner, the washing machine rumbles through its cycle, something metallic clicking rhythmically ever rotation. He gazes up at Laurent and finds the Frenchman staring back, clear-eyed and expectant, and realization clicks into place like the safety mechanism of a gun.

Slowly, Makoto peels the nicotine patch from his arm and drops it on the floor. “Maybe not,” he says. “But that’s not the real issue, is it?”

Laurent cocks his head. “Oh?”

“You don’t trust me,” Makoto says. The thought settles in Makoto’s mind, disappointing and somehow freeing in its certainty. “That’s why this isn’t working. I’m a con man, Laurent, but when the con gets a little too dangerous, I’m the one who gets left in the dark. Because you think I’ll ruin the game? Because I’m too rash, too emotional?” He reaches into Laurent’s pocket and pulls his cigarettes back out. Laurent lets him. “It’s bullshit. If you want me on a con, Laurent, you have to let me know what the con is.”

Now Laurent has stopped smiling. Instead, he’s sitting stock-still and looks like he’s doing math in his head, like Makoto is a miscalculation and Laurent is trying to pinpoint the moment he forgot to carry the decimal.

“Forget it,” Makoto says. His own smile must be a bitter, ugly thing. If Laurent can’t figure this out, Makoto isn’t going to explain it to him. He slides past Laurent without touching him and opens the door to find Ozaki hovering in the hallway.

Makoto glares.

Ozaki looks between Laurent and Makoto and the cramped little laundry room and wisely decides to leave.

“Edamame?”

Makoto startles awake. The English book he had been trying to read falls to the ground in a heap. An amused Cynthia leans casually on the doorframe to his bedroom, arms crossed. She’s wearing the long blue sundress she likes, sunglasses perched on her head and book tucked under one arm.

“Good book?” she asks, a playful expression on her face.

Sheepishly, Makoto scoops it up off the floor. A few of the pages are creased. “I wouldn’t know. I’m only on page ten.”

Cynthia tilts her head to read the title. “ _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_?”

It had been part of a set of children’s books on his shelf. He thought maybe it was some kind of joke— _The Wizard of Oz_ had been turned to face out, which seemed like something Laurent would do—but the books themselves were beautifully bound and illustrated, and Makoto had found himself flipping through the illustrations before he could feel too angry about the jab. Makoto tries to smooth out the new creases. “Have you read it?”

“When I was little, although I always preferred _The Phantom Tollbooth_ myself.”

“I don't know that one.”

Cynthia smiles. “It’s similar.”

His room has a chair in it that Makoto only ever uses to dump his clothes on. It’s full of clothes right now, so Cynthia perches gracefully on Makoto’s bed, the only other surface in the room. Like Abbie and Laurent, there’s a dancer-like precision to her movements, even in relaxed moments like these when (Makoto hopes) no one is being conned that makes it seem as if every movement is a deliberate choice. She gives him a smile that Makoto is starting to recognize as one that’s both comforting and cautionary. It’s a smile that usually happens before conversations Makoto doesn’t like.

Makoto narrows his eyes. “What?”

Cynthia’s smile widens into delight. “You’re getting better at reading body language, Edamame. Oh, don’t look so distraught—it’s nothing that bad.”

Scenarios play out in Makoto’s mind. Makoto, asked to leave because they only needed him for the con with the Suzaku Group. Makoto, asked to leave because they only kept him around for his dad. Makoto, asked to leave because he’s actually a bad con artist, and that’s why they left him in the dark for two months. Makoto, allowed to stay because everyone thought he would give up and go when it was obvious how very little he fit in with the real Team Confidence.

Cynthia’s expression softens, like she can tell what he’s thinking. Probably she knows the gist of it. “First, I wanted to apologize for letting you think Abbie and I were dead for two months. I think it was unnecessary to leave you with that grief for so long, and I’m sorry for the part I played in it.”

Makoto shrugs. “S’okay,” he says. “I got you killed, anyway.”

“You didn’t,” Cynthia says. “I knew how that escape attempt was likely going to go. I was informed of the risks of the con going in, and knew what I was getting into. You, on the other hand, did not.” She shakes her head. “Sharing information is important for establishing trust during a con. You weren’t informed, and so you weren’t able to fully consent to your participation in the job.”

Privately, Makoto disagrees. It’s true he didn’t know he had been set up to work with child traffickers when he got that job, but he still agreed to work for them when he realized what was going on. He hadn’t known Abbie and Cynthia were alive, but the choice he made—to stay with the Suzaku Group, to continue working with child traffickers, to learn from the chairwoman—they were still his choices. He can tell this apology is important to Cynthia though, so he says, “Thank you,” and hopes that will be the end of it.

Cynthia raises an eyebrow, too perceptive by half. Makoto rolls his eyes. “I don’t fully understand what you mean, but I promise to think about it more, okay?”

“I was hoping you would say that,” Cynthia says, “because that’s the other thing I wanted to mention.” She slides a piece of paper out of her book and places it in his lap. “This is a list of vetted therapists who are qualified to provide counseling, if you want to talk about your experiences.” She points to a name three lines down on the list. “This is my therapist.” Then she taps a name at the top of the list. “But I think you might like this doctor better. She speaks English and Japanese and focuses on both grief counseling and issues of trust and manipulation.”

Makoto is going to ignore the last ones for now. “You weren’t really dead.”

“But your grief was real,” Cynthia says. “It happened in a complicated and potentially traumatic time for you.” Cynthia places a hand lightly on Makoto’s shoulder. “It would be easy to ignore everything you felt in those months as irrelevant now, but I think that would be a mistake. Not to mention,” she withdraws and raises her tone to something more melodramatic, “you killed your own father due to a life of crime, complicated childhood trauma, and demonstrable grief. If anyone needs therapy, Edamame—”

“Alright, alright.” Makoto cringes a little to have it all spelled out like that. He’s not sure he’ll really consider going to a therapist—at this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were an actor hired by Laurent to manipulate him into assassinating Kudo or something insane like that. And even if it was a legitimate therapist, aren’t therapists just con artists who trick people into liking themselves?

“Neither Laurent nor Oz know about this list,” Cynthia adds lightly, like it’s an afterthought and not some deep-seated insecurity she guessed from the way his eyebrow twitched or something.

“Stop doing that,” Makoto grumbles, hiding his face behind the list.

“Have I missed my mark, or, like true archer, do I strike my quarry?” Cynthia recites, like it's a line from something. She surprises him by placing a swift kiss on his cheek and standing. “Abbie and I are going to revenge-dump a cooler of ice water on Oz later, if you want to join.”

“No thanks,” Makoto says, because that would ruin his plans to hide from his father forever. “Revenge for what, though?”

Cynthia pauses at the door and smiles evilly over her shoulder. “For you, obviously.”

And then she’s out the door, skipping away, ditching Makoto to unpack those complicated feelings on his own.

On the last day of Recovery Week, Makoto packs his suitcase for Okinawa. He doesn’t pack much—a suit, a few comfort clothes, the necessary toiletries. Cigarettes. It fits in a duffel with room to spare. Since prison, he’s gotten used to traveling light, but facing the reality of how little he actually needs in life always makes him feel like a kite with a cut string.

His gashapon collection—what remains of it, at least—is spread across the desk. Eleven figures, altogether, a mixture of people from history and anime and pop culture. Makoto has never been rigorous about keeping track of the gashapon once he gets them. Inevitably, he loses them in washing machines or hotel rooms or gives them as gifts. He imagines the gashapon have some small control over their own destiny, and that they go where they're needed. It's never been about maintaining a collection anyway. For Makoto, it was always the ritual of putting a coin in a machine, repeating the same action over and over again, only to receive something new and unexpected each time.

Now, Makoto stands in the middle of the room and looks at his gashapon, and at the beautiful children’s book set and the soft faux-fur blanket he’s half in love with and the little jade plant on the desk. Who waters it when no one is at the island? Makoto wonders if one of the crew stays to clean up and take care of the house while Cynthia is gone, or if Cynthia replaces the all the plants every time she comes.

After a moment, he plucks a figurine out of his collection—Mochizuki Chiyome—and sets her next on the bookshelf, next to _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_. He looks at the books and the things he’s come to love in this room and hopes he’ll have another opportunity to visit.

When he turns to leave, Laurent is leaning in the doorway, staring as if he’s been there for a while.

“Creeper,” Makoto says.

“Who, me?” Laurent fans himself with a manila folder like an aristocratic lady and wilts against the doorframe. “I didn’t want to interrupt what was clearly an important ritual.”

Makoto turns away and zips up his duffel. “Is the boat ready?”

“In just a few minutes.” Laurent studies Makoto for a moment, then seems to come to a decision. “Can I come in?”

The last question startles Makoto, and it takes him a beat too long to realize it was in Japanese. As a rule of thumb, Laurent insists on speaking in English or Chinese with Makoto to keep his language skills sharp and, Makoto is certain, to mock his accent. The change feels like some kind of unspoken concession. Makoto looks away and shrugs. “I won’t stop you.”

The clothing-dumping chair is, for the first time since Makoto arrived, empty. Laurent ignores it and sits on Makoto’s bed, crossing one leg over the other. Then, he sets the manila folder beside him on the bedspread. “I thought you would be interested in the dossier for the next job.”

That's unexpected. Makoto squints. “Seriously?”

Laurent spreads his hands in a _What can I say?_ gesture, agreeing and dismissive at once.

Makoto stares at the folder and makes no move to take it.

“Cynthia cut the heels off all my socks,” Laurent says. “Abbie will only speak to me in Arabic. I think Shi-won replaced my morning coffee with hot beef broth, but it might have been Kudo.”

“What? Why?”

Laurent huffs a laugh, half-smiling. “Edamame, are you kidding?”

Makoto is not. He shifts uneasily, not entirely sure of the joke.

The smile fades from Laurent’s face, replaced by something undecipherable. “They’re mad at me for leaving you in the cold on the last job, Edamura,” Laurent says, as if this should be obvious. “They can see that it hurt you.” Laurent is watching him closely now. “I don’t know about Shi-won, but Cynthia would kill someone for you if you asked, and Abbie would do it unprompted. Honestly, I’m starting to think they would kill _me_ if you asked.”

“Oh,” Makoto says. He sits at the end of the bed with a soft _fwump_. Three months ago, he would have blushing, but now a weird tingling sensation spreads through him, as if his brain can’t decide between happiness and suspicion. Out of the corner of his eye, Laurent angles his body towards him and keeps his body language open and still.

When Makoto doesn’t say anything else, Laurent continues, “They’re right. I crossed a line with the last case, and I want to make sure I don’t repeat my mistakes.” He nudges the manila folder closer.

 _Before you agree to any deal_ , the chairwoman told Makoto, the first time he sat in on one of her negotiations, _make sure you know what everyone in the room is willing to lose_. Makoto applies the same principle now. “Is Ozaki involved in this?”

“Which part? The con or me telling you about it?”

“Any part.”

Laurent raises an eyebrow. “Yes to both. Will that be a problem?”

Makoto picks up the folder and thumbs a corner thoughtfully, but doesn’t open it. “If I said I didn’t want him on the con, what would you do?”

“Then I would be short a man,” Laurent says, and it doesn’t escape Makoto that Laurent doesn’t say which man.

The folder is thinner than their usual dossiers—maybe thirty pages tops, with hot pink post-its sticking out the side. “And if I said I wanted out—no more cons or contact with you again, that I never wanted to see your face—”

“Then I would make it so,” Laurent says simply.

Makoto eyes Laurent. Laurent looks back, clear-eyed and solemn. Makoto tries to break the man’s expression into its component parts, but he still doesn’t know Laurent’s tells. Six months from now, will he look back on this moment and realize how naive he was being? Everything Laurent says these days seems insincere, even when Makoto knows (thinks he knows) he’s being genuine. 

Makoto exhales a sharp, short sigh. He’s never been good at planning things out ten steps ahead like Laurent, so he throws caution to the wind and goes his gut.

“I want to shoot Ozaki again,” Makoto says. “Or else I'm not doing it.”

Laurent hums thoughtfully. “I can make a few adjustments to the plan. Would stabbing be alright?”

Makoto taps his chin, pretending to consider. “I suppose I can make do.”

“Very generous.” Laurent smiles, tentatively pleased.

It feels different. Makoto commits the moment to memory, in case he needs to look back and point out to himself exactly when, where, who went wrong. He meets Laurent’s sea-glass eyes and his returning smile is a coin a gashapon machine. Insert, twist, and wait: you never know what you're going to get.

"Okay," Makoto says. He opens the folder. "Let's see what's next."


End file.
